The French journalist who accuses former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn of attempted rape has appeared on TV in France and repeated the allegation.
Asked if it was a violet sexual assault, Tristane Banon told TF1 channel that it wasn’t but that he had tried to have sex with her and she managed to get away.
“I’m sure he would have raped me if things didn’t happen differently and I wasn’t able to escape,” Banon said in a prime-time interview on television channel TF1, Reuters reports.
Strauss-Kahn had met with Banon at her request in a Paris police station earlier on Thursday, Euronews reports.
“I really thought that he would apologise. Not that he would admit to crimes, but that he would at least apologise for the facts that he concedes. He didn’t even dare look at me,” she told the TF1 channel.
Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers have questioned why Banon has waited eight years to press charges; the alleged incident took place in 2003 when Banon was 23.
She alleges that he tried to tear at her clothes in an empty apartment and she had to fight him off.
The journalist says her mother, a leading regional councillor for the French Socialist Party, told her to keep silent.
Strauss-Kahn emerged smiling from the two-hour legal meeting at police station in southern Paris.
A decision has not been made about whether the case will proceed, Reuters reports.
He denies Banon’s allegations, calling them “imaginary” in a televised interview earlier this month.
Strauss-Kahn, 62, was seen as the frontrunner to be the party’s candidate for the French presidential race next year until hotel maid Nafissatou Diallo also accused him of attempted rape in his luxury New York suite a few months ago.
He was charged the but case did not proceed after it was found that the maid had lied about her background. However, the matter forced Strauss-Kahn to quit is IMF position and he returned to France in August.
